공유

CHAPTER 23

작가: White Heart
last update 최신 업데이트: 2026-02-09 18:48:13

AURELIO

The drive home was silent.

Not the comfortable kind of silence that existed between two people who understood each other.

No, this was the heavy, suffocating silence of two strangers trapped in the same car, going through the motions of a marriage that might have died long ago but neither of us had bothered to bury.

Beatrice stared out the window, her profile illuminated by the passing streetlights, and I couldn't remember the last time I'd really looked at her.

Really ‘seen’ her.

Sh
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  • THE BILLIONAIRE'S MISTRESS: SWEET TEMPTATION   CHAPTER 32

    CAMILLE"I was watching a movie," I said, and my voice came out perfectly even. "I didn't pause it. Sorry, Dad."A beat of silence on the other end."A movie," my father repeated, with the particular tone of a man who was not entirely convinced but had decided not to pursue it."Yes.""At this hour.""It's not that late."Another pause, behind me, Aurelio had gone completely still, and I could feel the quiet amusement radiating off him like heat, which I was going to address thoroughly the moment this call ended."Well," my father said finally, "get yourself ready. The dinner is at eight.""I'll be there," I said. "I'll see you outside."I ended the call.I turned.Aurelio was looking at me with something in his eyes that was not quite a smile but lived in the same neighborhood as one, warm and private and entirely too pleased with itself."You're evil," I told him.He laughed.It was a real one, which was rare enough that it stopped me for a moment, the sound of it low and genuine a

  • THE BILLIONAIRE'S MISTRESS: SWEET TEMPTATION   CHAPTER 31

    CAMILLEHe didn't stop talking.That was the thing about Aurelio, he knew exactly what his voice did to me and he used it the way other men used their hands, deliberately, precisely, with the full knowledge of where it would land."You'll wear something simple," he said, his thumb still moving against my thigh, unhurried, as though we had all the time in the world and he hadn't just dismantled every wall I had carefully rebuilt over the last twenty minutes. "Something that makes the other men at the table forget what they were saying mid-sentence." A pause. "And you'll look at me like you don't know me.""I don't know you," I said, and my voice came out softer than I wanted it to."You know me better than anyone in that room will," he said simply. "That's the point."The heat that had settled low in my body was not leaving, if anything it had found a more permanent address, spreading outward from where his hand rested, moving up through my stomach, into my chest, making it difficul

  • THE BILLIONAIRE'S MISTRESS: SWEET TEMPTATION   CHAPTER 30

    CAMILLE He didn't say a word the entire walk to the car.I noticed it the way you notice a change in weather before it arrives, not the storm itself but the particular quality of quiet that comes before it, the air going still, the temperature dropping by degrees too small to name but impossible to ignore.Aurelio walked beside me with his hand at the small of my back, the way he I realised he had started doing, automatic and certain, but his eyes were somewhere else entirely. Fixed on the middle distance, on something I couldn't see and he wasn't offering to show me.We got into the car.He pulled into traffic without speaking.I watched his profile for a moment, the clean line of his jaw, the way his hands settled on the wheel, easy and unhurried, the picture of a man who had everything under control. But there was something behind his eyes that hadn't been there before, something that had settled into the silence between his brows and was refusing to leave.Keisha.It had to be

  • THE BILLIONAIRE'S MISTRESS: SWEET TEMPTATION   CHAPTER 29

    AURELIOThe silence stretched.Keisha let it.She was good at that, I realized, at holding space the way a prosecutor holds a pause beforedelivering the charge that dismantles everything, patient and deliberate, her eyes fixed onmy face with the kind of attention that strips a man down to his component parts.And still my mouth did not move.Not because I was hiding something, not because the answer was buried underneathevasion or careful calculation.But because when I reached for it, really reached, the way you reach for something you arecertain is there, my hand had closed around nothing but air and the faint, unsettlingrecognition that I had never once stopped to ask myself the question she was asking menow.Keisha's expression shifted.It moved from expectation to something quieter, something that looked almost like grief, andthen, before I could find the ground beneath my feet, she made a sound low in her throat.A scoff.Short and precise as a period at the end o

  • THE BILLIONAIRE'S MISTRESS: SWEET TEMPTATION   CHAPTER 28

    AURELIO Jackie's Restaurant smelled like warm bread and expensive coffee, it was the kind of place that existed in soft lighting and hushed conversation, where the tables were spaced far enough apart that you could say something you meant without the whole room hearing it. Camille had chosen well. I stood at the entrance for a moment, letting my eyes adjust, letting the noise of the street fall away behind me. And then I saw her. Keisha was already seated near the window, her back partially to the door, a glass of water in front of her untouched. She was dressed sharply, the way someone dresses when they are about to go to war again, without showing you the wounds they already had. Her chin was tilted slightly upward, her fingers loose around the stem of the glass, the picture of composed patience. She was waiting for Camille. I walked toward her anyway. The restaurant was moderately full, couples and small groups tucked into their corners, the soft clink of cutlery threadi

  • THE BILLIONAIRE'S MISTRESS: SWEET TEMPTATION   CHAPTER 27

    CAMILLE"Why didn't you leave?"The question sat between us, fragile and heavy at the same time.Aurelio didn't flinch, didn't look away or reach for his coffee to buy time the way most people would. He just held my gaze, steady and patient, like he'd been expecting this.Like he'd been waiting for me to get here.I swallowed hard and pushed forward before I lost my nerve."Isn't that how it's supposed to be?" My voice was quieter now, smaller. "You should have gone back to your wife. That would have been... that would have been the best thing to do."Something shifted in his expression, not anger, not defensiveness, something closer to curiosity."If I had left," he said slowly, carefully, "would you have felt better?"The question landed like a punch I hadn't seen coming.Would I have felt better?I opened my mouth, but words weren't said because the honest answer was no, and we both knew it. But admitting that felt like handing him something I couldn't take back."I didn't have

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